European companies are accelerating the roll-out of artificial intelligence, cloud computing and automation. At the same time, the area on which the effectiveness of these technologies depends – information management – is falling behind.
Hyland’s European Digital Maturity Index 2026 reveals a clear disconnect between the pace of investment and the quality of digital infrastructure. The overall maturity of the organisations surveyed rose to 69 out of 100. However, the maturity of content management services fell by 13 points to 56. This was the only category analysed that recorded a decline.
The survey covered 3,000 IT decision-makers from the UK, France, Germany, Spain, the Benelux countries and the Nordic countries. Over the course of the year, the proportion of companies using AI across all key systems rose from 2 per cent to 15 per cent. At the same time, 54 per cent of respondents felt that information within their organisations was too scattered or ambiguous to be reliably utilised in AI systems. In 57 per cent of companies, innovation projects did not progress beyond the pilot phase.
The models are ready. Corporate data is not
The limitation is no longer solely access to models, computing infrastructure or specialists. The problem lies deeper: in contracts, emails, presentations, scans, reports and document databases stored in separate systems.
Six out of ten companies point to information silos that hinder access to relevant content. Only 9 per cent have a fully integrated and scalable federated architecture that enables the use of documents stored across multiple repositories. A further 5 per cent still work mainly with paper-based documentation.
Half of the organisations surveyed admit that their systems are not sufficiently interconnected. In Germany, this figure rises to 64 per cent. This has a direct impact on processes requiring a complete context, such as risk assessment, contract analysis, claims handling and credit decisions. A model can process a document in an instant, but it cannot determine on its own whether it has received the latest version, whether it takes all sources into account, or whether the user is authorised to use the information contained within it.
The migration to the cloud is continuing. Currently, 42 per cent of companies operate entirely in the cloud or have migrated all resources suitable for migration to it. A year earlier, this figure stood at 32 per cent. However, a change in infrastructure does not automatically mean that information is organised. Several unconnected repositories in the cloud still remain just a collection of unconnected repositories.
The scale of implementations is growing faster than their usefulness
Eurostat data confirms the rapid uptake of AI. In 2025, 20 per cent of businesses in the European Union employing at least 10 people were using it, compared with 13.5 per cent the previous year. Among large firms, this figure stood at 55 per cent, and in the SME sector at 19 per cent. The most common application was written language analysis, an area particularly dependent on the quality of documents and access to the relevant context.
Regulatory pressures are mounting. From 2 August 2026, the main provisions of the EU AI Act will come into force, including transparency obligations for certain systems. Some of the requirements for high-risk applications have been deferred to 2027 and 2028, but obligations relating to data control, process documentation and AI oversight are already taking on operational significance.
Regional differences remain significant. The UK scored 74 points on the Hyland Index, whilst the Nordic countries scored 67. In the latter, only 6 per cent of organisations have a fully integrated federated architecture, whilst 7 per cent still operate primarily on paper.
The Hyland report is an industry study prepared by a content management system provider, not an official measure of the European economy. However, it highlights a specific contradiction: the number of AI implementations is growing faster than companies’ ability to provide them with consistent, up-to-date and controlled information. This explains why so many projects look impressive during presentations but fail to make their way into the company’s core processes.
